Chapter 17
Frost bit my nose, waking me from the best sleep I’d ever had in my life.
Shivering, I pressed closer to the source of warmth laying against my front. The delicious heat might have been enough for me to slide back into sleep, and perhaps find that golden light that called to me, except the second I moved, my face was exposed and I started shivering again.
Then a warm, hard body moved closer, the heavy soft weight of feathers draping over me like a blanket. A mouth traced the line of my neck. “Rest, Lilith.”
The rough purr of Sam’s voice tempted me to do just that, his words and strength a promise of safety.
And it was that promise that tugged me further into wakefulness.
“I’ve rested,” I said, forcing my heavy lids to open.
Everything that had happened flashed across my mind and I sighed, wondering what I was going to do now.
Azra flipped around to face me, the vivid intensity of his eyes painfully beautiful. “Are you feeling better, little thorn?”
I blushed, wondering if he’d followed me to Orion’s mind last night. If he could sense that I had been sated. “Um, yes. I think so.”
He grinned. “I took notes, you know. I knew you liked it rough, but that was some pretty big dick.” He chuckled, seeming to enjoy watching me squirm. “While I rather like my dick size, I have some ideas of how else I can fill you up.”
Sam groaned from behind me, his wing fluttering as it draped over both of us. “Stop tormenting her, brother. It’s too early for your shit. You know she can’t be with us yet.”
There was that word again.
Torment.
“That’s its own brand of torment,” Azra said with a sigh, then bopped me on the nose. “You need your rest, anyway. Especially if you’re going to learn to fly today!”
I blinked a few times. “Fly?” I turned the word over, felt the muscles in my back ache. “But… I can’t.”
“You can with our help.” Sam tugged me closer. “Maybe you failed to reach Cole, but we have three weeks, right? It’s time. Hell’s freeze has reached this realm and we can’t afford to wait any longer. You need to learn to fly.”
Heaving out a breath, I started to snuggle closer to Azra as my breath frosted the air. His words penetrated the sleepy fog in my brain, though, and I bolted upright in bed. “Hell’s freeze? Is it worse?”
Sam pushed up and braced a hand on the bed next to my hip, his wing curving over me protectively. “Yes.”
His breath made a puff of frost form in the air. Shivering, I grabbed the blankets and pulled them around me.
“I guess that’s why I’m so cold.” The protections around the Academy grounds were some of the strongest imaginable. If the freeze had penetrated this far… I squeezed my eyes closed once more.
I had to get to Cole. I had to figure out some way to get ahead of Lucifer.
Azra kissed my nose. “Your mother returned to her territory for now, to keep the core of Hell warm. The Academy is on the outskirts, so we’re going to bear the brunt of it for a while.”
My teeth started to chatter.
Azra snuggled in closer, curving a wing over me while Sam did the same. They were so warm and the temptation of them had my toes curling.
“Why aren’t either of you cold?” I wondered.
“We don’t feel it the way you seem to feel it.” Azra offered a faint smile. “Being a full-blooded angel has its perks.”
For some reason, it made my belly clench in apprehension. That nervous knot didn’t get any better under Sam’s watchful gaze, either. Trying for a cheerful tone, I asked, “So you’re not feeling that frosty nip in the air, huh?”
“Nope.” Azra studied me with a level gaze.
It didn’t make sense why I would feel the cold and they wouldn’t. Perhaps I was in tune with Hell’s suffering, whereas the angels wouldn’t be affected.
My belly rumbled, queueing us all into one other condition—Hunger.
Cheeks flushing, I managed a weak smile. “Sorry.”
“Why? We failed to feed you.” Something in Azra’s eyes softened and he leaned forward to kiss my brow. “We’ll find food for you. You need the energy. Certain matters have been put off long enough.”
The twins peeled away in unison, as if they’d rehearsed it.
“What issues?” I asked warily, pulling the blankets around my chilled body. “Do you know something about Calamity? Lucifer?”
Cole?
Azra gave me a funny smile. “We know a great many things about Calamity and Lucifer, beloved. But we must take this one step at a time. We have another matter entirely to deal with today. You must eat, then we’ll get to work.”
“Work?” The gleam in his eyes worried me. “Work on what?”
“Your flying lessons,” Sam said, stroking his fingers down my arm as he moved to join his brother. “It’s time, Lilith.”
Time? For flying lessons?
Shit.
They’d been serious.
Looking at the ground far, far below, I looked back at the twins.
It was the same cliff that Uni had brought me to. The little traitor had told my angelic mates about it and they’d decided it would be perfect for my lessons.
I’d showered, then my angels had watched me eat, and now they insisted I learn to fly.
Sure, a regular day as a student of Fortune Academy Underworld.
Sam’s brows came together as he made a shooing motion with his hands.
Azra just grinned, humor lighting his features in a way nothing else ever could.
“You expect me to learn to fly by jumping off a cliff?”
“How else are you going to learn?” Azra asked, throwing his arms open exuberantly.
The wind whipped at his feathers in a way that my belly pitch and twist. Nauseated, I looked away.
The twins had unearthed a clean, fresh uniform.
I’d been grumbling about it, but now I wished I had it in triple layers.
Quadruple. Anything that might protect me from the cold, or from the hard, unforgiving earth.
“To torture me?” That only made Azra laugh. Even Sam smiled.
That word meant something to them, too, like an inside joke I was supposed to get.
Both reactions irritated me so I turned my back on them, stumbling and flailing my arms when I teetered over the edge.
Sam caught the hem of my pants, keeping me balanced.
“How are we doing this, exactly? Will we do some practice flaps first?” I tested my wings. They still felt like heavy weights on my back.
They exchanged a quick, sneaky look.
“Not exactly,” Azra said.
I saw their plan. But it was a second too late. “Now, wait a second—”
Sam let go and I tumbled over the edge as I released a scream.
The world went whooshing by, the ground hurtling closer and closer as I struggled to snap open my wings. No good, no good! I was going to hit the ground and break every damn bone...
Just when I thought I was going to be a Champion of Calamity pancake, warm hands caught around my waist.
“You should have opened your wings immediately,” Sam said against my ear as he took us back up into the sky.
As soon as my feet were on solid ground, I spun around and slugged him in the stomach. His abs were steely and warm, despite the chill in the air that had followed us to this realm. Judging by the smile he wasn’t bothering to hide, the blow had only amused him.
“That’s how you’re going to teach me to fly?” I shouted. “Shoving me over the edge?”
“I caught you,” Sam said simply.
My fingers curled into fists. “You’re an asshole!”
“This is how creatures of the air learn, little blossom.” Sam kissed my brow, then pulled back. “You were already trying to spread your wings from the moment your feet left solid ground. It’s in your blood, the knowledge that you belong in the air. You just have to tease it to the surface.”
“By throwing me over the edge of a cliff,” I said, still sulking.
“Yes.”
Huffing a sigh, I looked back at the cliff. I wanted to tear back to the Academy but I didn’t let myself. Turning back to face the open air, I took a deep breath. “So I guess we do it again?”
“Remember, you have to spread your wings immediately. Trust yourself, and they will become as light as angel feathers should be. Listen to your body, Lilith. It knows how to do this.”
An hour later, my body sore and the muscles in my back screaming, I looked at Sam and said, “I think you’re wrong. Whatever knowledge that should be in my blood is gone. Maybe it was returned to sender because my feathers are the wrong color.”
Azra gave his brother a raised brow. “If she’d just let us worship her, all of this would come naturally.”
“No,” Sam and I said in unison, making me chuckle.
Azra threw his hands toward the heavens.
“Fine, but at least recognize that you’re part divine, Lily.
Your divinity, your ability to fly, these things are inside you—a part of you.
And you were so close that last time.” He blew out a hard breath and looked around.
“The main problem is that we need to get you higher, so you have more time to get your wings moving. But there isn’t anyplace around that I can see. This cliff is our best shot.”
I darted a look up, then averted my gaze. I’d been thinking the same thing and a possible solution had come to me. But I was too chicken shit to tell either of them.
“What was that look for, Lily?” Azra asked.
“What look?” Giving him a guileless smile, I tried to feign innocence. There was no way I was going to share with them that particular brand of crazy.
Neither of them seemed to believe my affectations of innocence, though. Narrowing his eyes, Sam studied my face, then, just like I’d done, he glanced upward.
I knew the second he’d figured it out.
“We can take you into the air and let go,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, so logical and reasonable I wanted to punch him. Reasonable, about dropping me and my big, heavy, useless wings.
Azra frowned, a line appearing between his brows as he considered. “It could work.”
“Yes.” Sam’s faint smile returned. “All you have to do is hit the air the right way one time, Lilith and you’ll never forget how to do it again.”
Sighing, I looked at my angels and nodded. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
They didn’t waste a second. We were shooting up into the air so fast, it stole my breath away. The biting cold stung my lungs as I sucked in air, the chill clearing any lingering doubts from my brain.
The twins slowed, coming to a hover with me hanging between them like an overgrown child.
“All right,” Sam said, the wind whipping his hair back from his face. “When I let go, snap open your wings and start to beat them. And don’t worry, we will not let you crash.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I managed a suitably confident smile, I guessed, because they both looked pleased.
And then I was hurtling through the air, the wind tearing at me.
I focused on how it made me feel when both Azrael and Samael touched me.
How I had wanted them to devour me in our dorm.
How I loved them.
Images filtered into my mind, sensual constructions of faint memories that made me gasp. My time with them in Purgatory hadn’t been a short one.
Ten years.
Longer than I’d been with any of my mates, and they had loved me the entire time.
A darkness overshadowed the memories, one I couldn’t put my finger on. Instead, I focused on the sensations. The memories of Azra kissing my neck as he filled me from behind.
His brother at my front, throwing his head back as I clawed bloody lines down his chest in the throes of pleasure.
Oh.
My wings came open, almost of their own accord this time, and instinct had them pumping. I gasped, startled at the difference between how this felt and my graceless flops from earlier.
“I’m doing it,” I whispered. I was actually flying.
The strain on my wing muscles was intense, but I’d take that any day if it meant I could do this.
Except I wasn’t doing it as well now. The strain was too much and I was losing altitude. Not falling, really, just… gliding. Downward. I tried to make my wings move harder, faster, but it wasn’t happening.
Now the ground was rushing up at me. Again.
And for some reason, it seemed to be rushing at me a lot faster than it should be, considering I was flying.
But I wasn’t flying anymore. I was falling—and I was falling fast.